A social and emotional loneliness Italian scale. Results of 4 studies.

Subjective loneliness describes people who feel a disagreeable or unacceptable lack of meaningful social relationships, both at the quantitative and qualitative level. To measure specific dimensions of loneliness, i.e., social and emotional, and to test what factors influence it, a self-report measure comprising 18 loneliness-items, based on scales developed by Russell et al (1980), and De Jong-Gierveld & Kamphuis (1985), plus 2 single-item measures of disphoric mood, and social isolation, was constructed. Factorial analyses of responses obtained in a first study from 199 Italian subjects, answering a paper-and-pencil scale version, showed that perceived loneliness has clearly two components, a social and an emotional one, the latter measured by two of the three scales. The results further showed that type and amount of loneliness are related, negatively, to frequency of social contacts, and, positively, to disphoric mood. In a second study data were obtained from a a nation-wide sample of 9.097 Italian subjects, 12 to about 70 year-olds, who filled the test on-line, on the web site of a magazine, Focus. The results confirmed the reliability of the three scales, namely social, emotional, and ‘general’ loneliness, highly correlated with each other, especially the latter two. Loneliness scores were significantly predicted by sex, age, education level, disphoric mood and social isolation, and, less so, by other variables – e.g., geographical area and profession. The scale reliabilities were confirmed by the results of a third study, with elderly men and women (N 105) living at home or in residential care units. The scales were significantly related, among others, to depression, and to various measures of the extension of, and satisfaction with, social contacts with relatives and friends. Finally, a fourth study with 315 career-starters from North Italy showed that the social and emotional loneliness measures correlate with life statisfaction, and with measures of emotional intelligence.